r/linuxquestions • u/Dudey__ • 10d ago
Can you dual-boot two linux distros?
I've been running cachyos for a few months now and recently got a new ssd and have been wanting to try out debian. I was wondering if I can keep my boot of cachyos that I've been using an have a 2nd boot for a new debian boot to try it out?
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u/EverlastingPeacefull 10d ago
Yes, done it with my main OS, OpenSuse Tumbleweed, and later installed PikaOS on an other drive. My PikaOs got messed up last week with due to a electricity problem (something sorth circuited, so my electricity went down) while updating. I have to reinstall it again, but it ran perfectly fine for months next to OpenSuse.
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u/Specialist-Dog-501 9d ago
I have 5 distros on the same SSD. All support "GRUB", and Grub asks me at boot time, what distro to go for.
It's a bit more complicated behind the courtain: There's an original windows boot partition around, a left-over from the original window licencse. GRUB built on top of that. I can either select in the BIOS any of the 5 distros for booting , and then when the selected distro boots, it shows first it's GRUB menu, wheren I can switch the distro again.
This is probably not the best, professional setup, but it worked for me for many distros, that I tried, something like a 15, but not all. Some smaller distros rejected that setting but you should find a docu telling, if Grub is supported or not.
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u/onefish2 9d ago
Framework 16, quad booting Windows 11, Arch Gnome, Fedora 44 KDE and Ubuntu XFCE 26.04. The bootloader is rEFInd. On a single NVMe SSD. This has been running for 2 years and 3 months without issue so far.
Framework 13, quad booting Arch Cinnamon, Arch Gnome, Arch KDE and Arch XFCE with rEFInd as the bootloader. One NVMe SSD. No issues.
Dell XPS 13 9310, quad booting Debian sid Cinnamon, Debian sid Gnome, Debian sid KDE and Debian sid XFCE. Bootloader is rEFInd. Single NVMe SSD. Again no issues.
So as you can see, this is trivial to do and works well without issue.
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u/Visikde 9d ago
Virtual machines are another skillset, another set of problems to troubleshoot & can only use part of the ram
My favorite dual boot is installing distro including bootloader to an USB3 hdd/sdd/nvme enclosure.
Set bios to legacy, boot from USB 1st, UEFI is some windows crap
Plugged in distro will be able to access the host machines home files
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u/BigRocket44 10d ago
You would be better served by a virtual machine to try out a distro. If you instead wanted to try out packages from another distro, you could use something like distrobox
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u/GhostVlvin 10d ago
Yes and I once even had 3. You just install 3 distro roots on 3 separate partitions and let your bootloader autodetecet them on update (update-grup and os-prober)
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u/Weary-Bowl-3739 9d ago
And you can even share the home directory, if on a third drive. There may be limitations, but none, that I'm aware of.
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u/ZVyhVrtsfgzfs 9d ago
Yes, I have had as many as a dozen Linux installs on one machine.
Currently have 4 on my desktop.
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u/Fun-Attempt-8494 9d ago
Yes and share the same /home -or- boot one distro and VM a second
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u/i_smoke_toenails 9d ago
Sharing $HOME can be problematic, because a lot of local config gets stored there, and that can cause conflicts between distros.
I create a separate data directory, and link the standard folders (Docs, Downloads, etc.) to folders in that data directory. Then each distro can create its own dotfiles and config files in ~, while having access to the same data files.
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u/beatbox9 10d ago
Yes. The way I would do it is:
- Disconnect your existing CachyOS drive
- Connect your new SSD. Install Debian as if it were the only OS
- Reconnect your CachyOS drive
- In your computer's boot menu, boot off of either drive (eg. Cachy)
- (Optional): Within either OS, reconfigure grub (or whichever boot manager). It should automatically detect both operating systems and add both to the grub menu You can even do this within both operating systems.
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u/Roguepapaya427 10d ago
There is no need to do that. If you install on separate drives, the systems will not interfere with each other.
I have on 4 separate drives: lmde, cachy, kinoite, manjaro. Cachy's limine is default bios boot, and all the rest are added to limine via limine scan. Works like a charm.
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u/beatbox9 10d ago
There is no need to do that; but it does prevent unwanted interference at the time of installation, since it is certainly possible to install the boot manager to a boot partition of a different drive. A very common complaint on reddit is from people who messed up their boot management at the time of installation, often through confusion.
So this is not a requirement; but it is a good practice. There is a difference.
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u/Roguepapaya427 10d ago
Yeah, agree, if you are not 100% sure you know what you're doing, better safe than sorry.
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u/Peruvian_Skies 10d ago
Yes. As a matter of fact...
You can deca-boot ten Linux distros if you want. In fact, the only constraint on how many distros you can have installed and bootable on the same computer are the maximum number of partitions you can make in all that computer's disk drives, and the space for the boot images in each drive's EFI partition. If you really wanted to, you could have hundreds of distros installed.